Meta: 3 Key Takeaways for Long-Term Investors

Three key takeaways emerged from Meta's recent earnings call on Oct. 21, 2026 for long-term investors:

First, Meta unveiled its Muse personal agent, an AI assistant designed to execute tasks for users. The launch of this technology has seen rapid adoption, with over 10 million users in the US and Canada setting up Muse personal agents within a few months. This adoption is being driven by a surge in shopping volume, positioning Muse to generate transaction fees from business partners over time.

Second, Meta is shifting its focus in the virtual reality (VR) hardware segment to prioritize software and personal agent models. By reducing operating losses in this segment, the company is freeing up capital to fund high-return AI infrastructure. Management expects the profit and loss (P&L) of Reality Labs to improve, with operating losses coming down to approximately $15 billion next year and trending toward profitability from there.

Finally, transitioning content processing to internal Muse models is improving recommendation accuracy across social feeds while drastically lowering compute expenses. These lower unit costs strengthen profit margins as engagement scales across Meta's apps. In offline evaluations, these models outperformed previous production models and reduced per unit content processing costs by more than 80% across Instagram threads, Facebook, and ads.

With continued improvements in compute efficiency, Meta's Muse is expected to become highly profitable over the next few years, presenting a strong long-term investment opportunity.